Out sick yesterday -- and really actually sick, not recovering from a hangover or bingeing on crack whores at 11 am. Just spent the day languishing on the couch or bed or terlet, with occasional glugs of Gatorade to maintain my precious electrolyte balance. And of course the one work day I miss is the one day that actual work appears on my desk. At least there's heat. Normally I don't require heat, as I'm hot-natured. I usually burn like a veritable sun of caloric metabolisation, but not recently. Now I find myself freezing, then sweating, then freezing again. A general, achey malaise afflicts my limbs. Two nights of this and I'm turned into a sort of OCD zombie. I perform mindless, repetitive tasks with robotic efficiency, but anything requiring higher brain functions causes the system to overload. Not much else to yammer about today as I'm just trying to get out of here in one piece, or at least several pieces that match. Fend for yerselves!

Confidential to "Google AdSense" for rejecting Diztopia due to "sensitive content": And here I thought you were essentially the LARGEST DEVIANT-PORN ENABLER IN THE HISTORY OF MANKIND. So sorry that you shan't deign to have your adverts for T-shirts and high-school equivalency degrees disgraced by association with a blog that occasionally says "f*ck." Well, fine. Me and my ten readers will just have to click on ads for herbal Viagra elsewhere. Snobs.

No heat in the office today. I'm sitting here in coat and scarf, typing with the gnarled remnants of frostbitten limbs. I tried to creep downstairs and slit open the carcass of our office manager so that I could nestle in her steaming entrails, but two coworkers had already beaten me to it. No room at the innards. I did manage to escape with half a leg of intern mutton purloined from the smoke-pit, which I'll have to gnaw cold. And this was from one of the smaller interns, so it won't sustain me for long. But I have hopes that I can swoop down from my second-story window upon an unsuspecting freshman. They know to fear upperclassmen and faculty, but they have yet to learn that administrative staff are their most deadly predator.

I have also learned that someone suggested a holiday lunch for the office. Which was countered by the equally objectionable suggestion that we instead do a potluck office lunch. I informed the organizer that I will bring a pasta salad, which is widely recognized as the ultimate signifier of potluck disdain. Let those wriggling macaroni tubes be slathered in viscous rebuke! Let diners pick through in vain for a sign of cheerful pimentos or colorful rotini! No. This pasta salad coheres in a lumpy monotone mass, resisting all implements, cold and fibrous as a deliquescing brain. Perhaps a few fetid olives will be scattered across the top, like lesions. The brave will carve off little extraneous sub-populations of macaroni from the edges of the dish, as none dare plunge a spoon into the mayonaissey heart. Why is it cold on the outside and warm on the inside? What man can say? Leave it be. Take away a solitary macaronus if you can, just so there's one on your plate. But don't pretend you'll eat it. You don't want that inside you. It is designed to fit perfectly inside the walls of your right ventricle, a sleeve of doom waiting to constrict on the first passing clot.

So there's that. Plus a couple meetings this week to tiresomely re-explain what I have already detailed, but that's nothing new. Oh yeah, there's also another luncheon, this one catered. It takes place after a meeting of the muckety-mucks, to which the proletariat aren't invited. But we are brought in to sup on the lunch spread, sort of like the king inviting the peasantry inside the keep walls to feast on heaps of yuletide lardoons and wheat chaff. But it's free, and they got sammiches. It's either that or White Castle.

Should your tastes run more to the anatomical, perhaps you'd like to explore the theoretical skeletal systems of cartoon characters. Moving even further into the realm of the abstract, enjoy Moebius Syndrome, a surprisingly addictive puzzle game. For Karsten, coincidentally enough here in New York even now, here's one of those Quicktime panoramas of Strawberry Fields, which should give him all kinds of warm fuzzies and cold stickies. And then there's the trailer for the Tim Burton version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Looks Deppalicious, though I must say it looks like Johnny Depp is reprising a combination of his roles as Ed Wood and Edward Scissorhands with a little Anna Wintour thrown in. (via)

Take a gander at this virtual actress thing. One of the best attempts I've seen yet, though I'd be curious to see how good the eyes look when the image is larger. (via)

Here's an thoughtful and tactful way to remind loud cell-phone talkers that they shall reap the whirlwind of rebuke for sowing the fields of assholery. And please for to enjoy this excellent crank letter sent in to Gizmodo. I have nothing! I will be killed soon as Toshiba planned! (via)

This is the 200th post on Diztopia. 200 x an average post length of 300 words = 60,000 words, or halfway through the novel manuscript I haven't written. Time well spent!

I mean, we only met because she'd seen me painting on the cave wall with ash mixed with boar's blood and berry juice. She was all "Ag, ag, ag, arg," and pointed at this one drawing I did of a bunch of my friends chasing a mammoth. She liked that one and I admit it's pretty good. So she was like "Aaaah, gaaaah, uck," and slapped her chest and waved at some other part of the cave wall, and I went over there and what do you know, she's painting on the wall too! There were some cute drawings of fires and what looked like a bunch of us in the cave, and she also drew a mammoth, but it was with another mammoth. Two mammoths! I banged on the second mammoth and said "Graaaaaaaaa," and she acted like it was nothing that she came up with the idea of two mammoths. Though you know, maybe I was being so complimentary because I just liked the way she stank.

Anyway, I waited until her dad was out of the cave or dead or something -- I'm not really sure who her dad was -- and then I sneaked over and grabbed her and dragged her to my side of the cave. And one thing led to another, oh yeah. It was pretty hot. Neither of us really knew what we were doing, and I was afraid her dad or one of the big alpha males would come over and bash in my head with a rock, but they left us alone. What I'm saying is that it was nice. She was pretty into it.

I might have told my friends about it later, when we were all jumping around and bellowing by the lake, and I know some of them could smell it on me and they're acting like, you're the man. So what, it's how guys talk, and don't tell me that girls don't because I overheard my sister telling her friends once that "oooook ooook oooog" shit, which is just nasty. But then back in the cave one night, this guy I know looked over to where she was sleeping, then looked at me, then looked at the cave wall, then at me. And I was like "Raaaaaaaaagh!" and hit him with a rock. I mean, no way am I going to paint her on the cave wall. Talking to friends is one thing, but anybody can walk by and see a cave painting. Besides, she had started to paint me once, and I didn't like it, so I made low growls until she stopped, and then I urinated on the painting, so I thought we'd reached an understanding that cave painting about each other was off limits.

I saw that guy I hit with the rock later and we were cool, I think he knows I was just playing around, even though I was a little angry. After she came over to my side of the cave for a few nights, I got sort of used to it, everything seemed to be fine. And let me just say that it was still hot and heavy under the bear skins. One afternoon, though, she went out to chew on some grass with her friends, and the brother or father of the guy I hit with the rock came over and grabbed my arm, pulling me across the cave. I thought he was going to kick my ass or hit me with a rock, but then he showed me her side of the cave, where it looked like she had been doing a lot of painting.

Dude, she was doing cave paintings about me! About US! There we were, two stick people talking in the cave, then laying together by the fire, and then there's the stick man still laying there, but now the stick woman is off by herself looking disappointed. But the worst -- the absolute worst -- was showing a bunch of stick men by the lake. OBVIOUSLY it was supposed to be me and my friends, like I have to spend all my time with her now. But in the same drawing, the stick woman is up in the cave LYING DOWN WITH ANOTHER STICK MAN! I couldn't tell who it was, because she drew him sort of anonymously, but I will hit him with so many rocks when I find out ... wouldn't surprise me if it was some other cave painter, the scene is so fucking incestuous. It was absolutely humiliating to know that everyone in the cave saw that stuff. I don't care if it is her art project, you don't get a free pass on being a jerk just because you're an artist.

So that was it. I never went over to her side of the cave again, and when she came to find me a couple times I crawled under the bear skins and pretended I wasn't home. Kind of chickenshit I know, but I didn't want to deal. As for the cave painting, I took the high road. I drew some stick women getting trampled by mammoths, but you can't really tell who it is. I was just blowing off steam. I'm not going to sink to her level. She might still be painting me like a lot of those bitter exes who get into cave painting just to trash people, but that's her problem. But I sure learned that if you get into a relationship with a cave painter, you better be ready for them to paint about you. I mean, I'm not like that, except for this painting of the stick woman getting eaten by a lion. That's totally her. Bitch.

[Editor'z note: This is a parody, inspired by this article (still available here) by this person. The "joke" relies on the fact that the same kind of article gets recycled about email flirting, IMing, text messaging, Google stalking, online dating, and now blogging, etc. The parody contains no resemblance to any persons living or dead besides the cave people described, who are dead, and thus unable to sue.]

"I mean, [Duff's] doing great. I'm a fan of hers. My sister loves her," the 17-year-old Lohan said on ABC's "Good Morning America" on Tuesday. "I just wanted to let her know I have no problems and neither should she. We were friends."

The Washington Post has an extensive, well-researched two-part story on the death of NFL player and Army Ranger Pat Tillman (part 1, part 2). The Army tersely admitted back in May that Tillman was killed by friendly fire, and I dutifully wrote a screed in response. Turns out the full details are even more sad, and the Army's attempts to spin Tillman's death into a heroic Troy-style funeral march are predictably contemptible. The short version is that not only was Tillman killed by friendly fire, but he was neither "leading" nor "defending" anyone besides himself, one other Ranger, and an allied Afghan militia fighter (the latter of whom was killed along with Tillman). Plus, he also wasn't trying to defend his unit "without regard to his personal safety," but rather got hamburgered while frantically trying to evade his fellow Ranger's gunfire -- demonstrating a much more believably appropriate regard for his personal safety, for all the good it did him.

It appears that Tillman, the other Ranger, and the Afghan were firing on those attacking the other Americans, when the Americans mistook Tillman's group for enemies and poured thousands of rounds of Humvee-mounted heavy-machine-gun fire on their position. The Afghan was killed pretty much immediately, with the two Rangers hitting the dirt and screaming -- unheard -- for the firing to stop. At some point the firing did pause, and the Rangers got back up, but apparently the still oblivious Humvee gunners had just moved to get a better angle. The guns started firing again, and Tillman was hit. He spent the last few minutes of his life bleeding, calling out for the firing to stop, and tragicomically insisting "I'm Pat Tillman, dammit!" to no avail. Either he was finally killed by more bullets or took more hits postmortem -- when the firing finally stopped, the other Ranger noted a "river of blood" pouring from Tillman, and that "his head was gone."

Nice. I feel compelled to retract some of the venom from my earlier post, since it's not Tillman's fault that his death got the Hollywood treatment, and he wasn't responsible for the command fuckups that lead to his demise. It's no surprise that Tillman barking orders and defending his comrades seemed a more palatable press release than Tillman yelling for help and getting his head blown off by those comrades. I suppose it should be amazing that the Army could further cheapen a death that's already so pathetic, but somehow I'm not surprised.

Yesterday on the subway to work, a gang of hooligans boarded the train. They were hooting and whistling and shouting as hooligans do, and since we were passing northward out of the South Bronx, these hooligans were carrying on mostly in Spanish. Aside from keeping a weather eye on their more physical antics, I was untroubled by their presence. Such events are routine. However, further down the car, a well-dressed Hispanic man stood up and began shouting in Spanish. At first I thought he was hectoring the feckless youth. (Note: the verb "to hector" does in fact come from the Trojan Hector, sensitively portrayed by Eric Baña in Troy. Just think of Brad Pitt warbling "Heeeeck-Toorrrrr!" over and over.)

Anyway, the shouting man rotated in place, shouting at everybody. Then he switched back and forth between Spanish and English, preaching the aggressive, accusatory fire and brimstone common to subway evangelism. The kids began to loudly heckle (from the Middle English hekelen, to dress flax) the subway preacher, also in Spanish in English. A caucasian woman suddenly shot out of her seat and screeched at the preacher man (in English), "They're not doing anything wrong! They're not doing anything wrong!" It was cacophony, but I liked how certain elements of the chorus chimed in at certain points, like that Omen-style version of "Carol of the Bells." I felt like joining in with the only Spanish I know: ¡Señor Estrada es muy macho! ¿Que es mas macho? ¡Si, Señor Estrada!

Anyway, on to link dumps, now in compressed form. Only one via-link per source. I can't just keep giving away all this extra love for free, kids. My love DOES in fact cost a thing. Just. One. Thing.

Here's a boring ol' computer chess game, but the innaresting difference is that you get to see exactly all the many thousands of moves the computer is contemplating before it kicks your ass. This be the latest Salad Fingers cartoon, which has a certain Tim Burton creepy charm. As if you ever doubted there's a fetish for everything, enjoy this fellow who gets off to boiling people alive. Next, feel free to "go" here for the best in urinal photography. Ever wanted to see a mutated freak lead a pack of hominid poodles in aerobics? You're in luck! You might be surprised to learn that the National Christmas Tree Association also considers artificial trees to be mutant freaks, even though only "real" trees could actually mutate. But don't let that stop you from kicking some fake-tree ass ... just don't hit the elf. Or do, who cares. Into Pieces is a cute bit of collage animation like in ye olde days of Liquid Television. To anyone feeling "blue" about our nation's place in the world, I have only this to say: America! Fuck Yeah! Board games are a classic family holiday pastime, but why settle for Trivial Pursuit or Scattegories when you can liven things up with Sock Full of Bees? Check out this amusing short toon detailing sailor-man Popeye's reaction to various anime-manga lunacies. Val Kilmer's ominous visage takes over Toronto! Or is it just the work of some punk-ass kids? And The Cat is a pre-Cambrian hipster who deserves his own show on Fox. Or maybe UPN. PBS? But only if the art is this weird. (via)

Concerned that you might have contracted Seckel's bird head syndrome on your last visit to the avian sanitarium? Well, at least now you can read about how your disfiguring ailment came to be named at Who Named It? (via)

I'm very pleased to see further advances in the burgeoning field of toys that hurt you. And don't make me tell you how many defenseless relatives I would crush with my mechanized boots to get one of Toyota's "iFoot" robot power suits, pictured above of course. (via)

You have to admire actor Bill McKinney for wholeheartedly embracing the "squeal like a pig" line that made him famous. I had no idea he had such an oeuvre of villainy, in fact, as he's been killed off not just by Burt Reynolds, but also by Clint Eastwood. He also looks scary bald, though not in such a rape-y way. (via)

And to round it out with something wholesome, here's an excellent Quicktime panorama from the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. Beware the yellow god! He floats above, always watching! (via)

1. It is on a building near my office on Fordham Road in the Bronx. The Flintstones and Rubbles always seem to mock me. "Morning there, chump! Welcome back to another day of stultifying drudgery here in the Borough that Time Forgot!" Are they amused that I'm getting off a subway or bus as they motor past in their bitchin' rockmobile? Or are they sneering as they drive off and leave me behind? "So long, sucker! Have a great time breakin' rocks!"

2. It is on the wall of and in fact incorporates the logo (not pictured) for "American Ways Rent-a-Car". Leaving aside the no doubt baldfaced licensing theft from Hanna-Barbera, it seems questionable to lure auto-rental customers with an image of a car made of stone, twigs, and stretched hide. Note, however, that they thought to leave out the Flintstones' and Rubbles' feet protruding from the bottom of the car, as the idea of renting a foot-powered car would really lack appeal for a modern customer.

3. I never liked the Flintstones, even as a child. I don't think my child self was cognizant of the fact that the show was a ripoff of the Honeymooners, but it still had this universally communicable anachronistic vibe .... even exceeding the obvious anachronisms of being set in caveman times. The Flintstones breathed the foul, musty fumes of the repurposed sitcom it was. The plots rotated around mundane issues of jobs and domestic strife and neighborly squabbles. Kids do not care about this bullshit. Same problem with the Jetsons really, though at least there were occasional alien and robot attacks there.

4. Of the Flintstones' many irritations, the one that really annoyed my younger incarnation was the tiresome and endlessly revisited Stone Age technology joke, as in the foot-powered car. These Rube Goldberg contraptions often as not involving an enslaved dinosaur or pterodactyl, and they seemed to use up more energy and resources -- and cause more hassle -- than simple human labor. What is the point of pushing that ridiculous car around with your feet, for God's sake? I was always depressed by the smaller creatures imprisoned under the sink and forced to eat refuse, used as can openers, mounted on vehicles and squeezed to perform as car horns or sirens, etc. What kind of society does that? I'm surprised they didn't have the last remaining Neanderthals yoked up to treadmills or serving as temple prostitutes.

5. Don't even get me started on the creepy celebrity guest-toons. Just take a look at Fred with guest "star" Tony Curtis. Try to imagine the effect this has on a child.

6. Finally, it reminds me of a youthful anal-retentive issue (one of many, you might be surprised to learn). Look at Fred Flintstone's eyes in the mural. They are big and saucer-like. Everyone else -- even his own children -- has little dots or little beady eyeballs. It makes it seem as if Fred is always dilated. He's X-ing, man! As a kid, it bothered me when characters on the same cartoon had their features drawn in different ways. I suppose it had to do with making Fred more expressive, but in the end it was crap Hanna-Barbera animation anyway, so who cares.

Stop this crazy thing! Spleen vented? Check. I do like the "D-Block" graffito, though. Props to the homeys on D-Block!

Chet Week continues with the fulfillment of a Chettish request, i.e. posting photos from a long-ago incident wherein my car nearly plunged into a sinkhole. Chet was there (that's him kneeling on the right, barely visible between two standing band dudes), along with several others, not to mention my favorite band at the time, the Sugar La Las. Yours truly is the topmost of the two heads leaning out over the kneeling girl. Click on the pics for larger versions. To recap:

Back in the days of yore known as 1992, I was but an innocent lad made of sticklike limbs and frizzed hair, and I had some of the worst musical taste imaginable. I was only just beginning to emerge from a unilateral diet of (also frizzed) hair metal. One of the first local bands I ever had a group crush on was the Sugar La Las, an art-pop assemblage fronted by a large Eurofreak named Mats Roden, and a pixieish temptress named Carole Griffin. Plus a drummer and percussionist and bassist/keyboardist whose names escape me now. They were a fun, wacky band, and they had the good fortune of being generally good musicians. Roden wrote most of their songs, and he was a medium genius at coming up with great pop guitar hooks and catchy lyrics. Plus, they did face-melting covers of "Shook Me All Night Long" and "Delta Dawn" among others.

Anyway. The Sugar La Las, though nominally based in my ole home town of Birmingham, would occasionally come southwest to Tuscaloosa for shows. They did so one Sunday night at a dive called the Ivory Tusk, off the University of Alabama's now largely dead Strip. Great show, much fun, etc., with several of my local pals in attendance, La La converts all. Since it was a Sunday night, the bar had to close a little early, and there were fewer people than normal. Which meant I got to skeeze on the band a bit, which no doubt led to some awkward "I love you guys" booze talk. Can't really recall those details ...

What I can recall is that another associate, who we'll call Magoo, wanted to buy a T-shirt but was out of cash. I agreed to drive him to an ATM to re-fund himself. We staggered out of the bar to a campus parking lot across the street, now empty except for my gleaming 1988 Chevy Cavalier. We piled inside, I reversed out of the parking space, and then the car made a crashy-hitty-impacty sound.

Not good! Perhaps I was a little tipsy, officer, but I was pretty sure there were no cars or foreign objects nearby. But I gingerly put the car back into drive and eased forward. The car did not move, though it shuddered a bit. WTF, I thought, years before that acronym became popular I might add. Did I get hung up on a parking barrier or something? Magoo exited the vehicle to check, then frantically beckoned for me to join him.

Outside, we saw this. The pavement had collapsed beneath one of my front tires. It doesn't look like much in this photo, but this opening was only the top entry to a large, bulbous chamber, about fifteen feet deep and thirty feet across. My car was essentially perched on nothing but a thin crust of asphalt.

We scampered back to the bar to summon help. Calls were made. The Sugar La Las at first refused to believe us, but they and the few remaining barflies came out to spectate. Cops appeared with truncheons akimbo, disappointed that this was an actual geovehicular emergency that required them to help rather than harm us. They sprang into action by distributing orange plastic cones around the perimeter, which had the desired calming effect.

Band chick Griffin was overcome by the scene and was barely restrained from hurling herself into the depths of Hades. Eventually a sort of Gobot tow-truck was called, and it managed to extricate my car from the brink for about a hundred bucks. Later it was revealed that the sinkhole was actually an ancient, long-disused, unmapped water main from bygone times that had finally collapsed. This became a key detail, since the University blamed the city of Tuscaloosa since it was their old water main, while the city of Tuscaloosa said it was a University parking lot. End result: Chris pays for his Gobot truck assistance. The hole was excavated, filled with dirt and gravel, and paved over within a week. Had my car actually fallen in, I and Magoo would likely be down there still.

As to the Sugar La Las, they were a classic case of bittersweet almost-making-it. Always on the brink of a record deal, artistic principles and band infighting finally split them up. Last time I saw Mats Roden, he was a waiter at a Thai restaurant. I heard that he later died of an aneurysm or embolism or something. Carole Griffin went on to become a successful baker and restaurateur. I drove the Chevy Cavalier to Spokane, Washington, and then back to Alabama two years later, but that return trip finally killed the poor beast, and I sold it for a few hundred bucks. The end. Excelsior!